I think people are missing the bigger picture here.
You do not have to agree with what Lindsay did. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is defending the killing of children. She has to live with that everyday for the rest of her life! But postpartum-onset mental illness is real, whether hormonal, neurological, psychiatric, or some combination of all three, and we do an absolutely terrible job educating families about it.
Mothers are sent home after giving birth with stacks of paperwork, billing documents, birth-certificate forms, Social Security paperwork, advertisements for placenta services, cord-blood banking, and everything else imaginable. Yet after three children, I was never handed so much as a pamphlet explaining postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum OCD, postpartum psychosis, postpartum onset mental illnesses, warning signs, what a spouse should look for, or what to do if or when a family needs immediate help.
That should horrify people.
A woman can appear completely fine and then deteriorate rapidly. Fathers and partners need education too. Families need to know what they are looking for, and mothers need to be able to say, Something is wrong, without immediately fearing that their children will simply be taken away from them. None of this will ever change if we don’t have the conversations and if we don’t change the system as a whole, a singular change is not going to fix the bigger issues.
This case should have created a serious national conversation about maternal mental health, treatment, prevention, early intervention, and how we protect children while also making it safer for mothers to ask for help.
Instead, everybody got shoved into camps 1. throw her under the jail, 2. Patrick did it Lindsay is completely innocent, or 3. Lindsay was not criminally responsible and needs treatment rather than prison.
And the “Patrick did it” crowd has taken this to a level I have never witnessed in my lifetime. This man lost all three of his children. He forgave his wife. He testified for the commonwealth but in Lindsay’s favor. He has publicly supported treatment rather than punishment, helped create a memorial for his children, has advocated for postpartum mental-health resources and even created a foundation to create the first postpartum treatment facility.
Yet people are digging through his Reddit history, analyzing facial expressions, breathing, clothing, wording, parenting decisions, and every ordinary inconsistency they can manufacture into a conspiracy. Even posts showing how desperately he was trying to help his wife are being twisted into evidence against him calling his Reddit posts from years ago as a long drawn out alibi 🙄 Be so F for real right now!
It is disgusting. Dig deeply enough into anyone’s life and you will find inconsistencies, bad decisions, awkward statements, parenting mistakes, coincidences, and things that look different with hindsight.
None of us live our lives knowing that someday strangers on the internet may freeze frame every facial expression and reconstruct our worst day from a keyboard.
Hindsight is 20/20.
Do better. Be better. Full stop.
#lindsayclancy #patrickclancy